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UDK: 3D Environment

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HTivey
polycounter lvl 8
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HTivey polycounter lvl 8
I've been doing a UDK level for the past few weeks, here are some of the models I've been working on.

This is a piratey island environment.

I require a lot of feedback and suggestions to try and push my texturing and lighting as far as I can :)

So far I've done a pirate ship, but for now, I'm working on a tavern, and experimenting with the textures.

2ezpxja.jpg
ptw68.jpg

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  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    I'm having some trouble... how can I make the textures look less flat?
    I've added diffuse, normal and spec maps to the UDK test in the last post.
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Added extrusions to the roof and added more highlights to the roof tiles

    2nd UDK test, no lightmaps

    34r7m0k.jpg
  • LANKUS MAXIMUS
    Looking good. The trim addition is a great improvement.

    I'm still reasonably new to UDK but I've been using displacement maps to get an extra kick out of my textures. But i guess it depends on how your generating your normal's..

    It has helped me a lot with portraying that sense of depth. I think it'd be an effective way of giving your details more pop...
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    yeah, I've been trying to make it look less flat :/ it still is a little flat tbh
  • switz
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    switz polycounter lvl 10
    Your textures are coming along, but I think they could be pushed a little more - try to incorporate more narrative into them, like adding scrapes, knicks or cracks.
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    will do :) I'm going to learn displacement maps too.. I feel like they're still a little flat
  • LANKUS MAXIMUS
    Good plan.

    And i agree with switz, a bit of wear underneath your supporting beams would break up some of the contrasting areas in your textures.
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    do you think it'll be worth putting it through mudbox to add more detail?
  • LANKUS MAXIMUS
    Personally i really like using the Ndo2 to Mudbox workflow.

    Here's a free tutorial from Eat3D. Might help you conjure a few ideas as to how you want to approach your maps...

    http://eat3d.com/free/mudbox_displace
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Took a break from the house and started on the island terrain. Here's the concept, the terrain so far, and a rock sculpt; all done in Mudbox

    flisz7.jpg
    25aqkqq.jpg
    2znprbp.jpg
  • LANKUS MAXIMUS
    blanked.

    Terrain layout Looks cool.
  • KristaW
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    KristaW polycounter lvl 9
    Have you looked into parallax mapping in UDK? It might help with the flatness of your textures. This project looks fun. Keep posting.
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    ooo what's parallax mapping? :O never heard of it.

    Here's the terrain so far, working on the cliff

    4r5lkn.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    island terrain to far

    33dui43.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    more island progress

    sfurux.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    back to the roof tiles... decided to make one out of a cub instead of a plane and play with the vertices a little to exaggerate the shapes of the tiles, this is what I have so far.

    Includes diffuse, parallax and specular maps.

    Still feels a little flat. Any suggestions?

    20tqtd2.jpg
  • KristaW
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    KristaW polycounter lvl 9
    So after looking closer at parallax mapping I may have given you bad advice. I've used it for school projects to help give depth to stone walls where a character could get close enough to have the normal map illusion to fall apart. Normal maps are cheap to use in an engine but parallax maps are more expensive. They probably shouldn't be used on something like a roof because the player's camera will probably never get close enough to need it.
    For the image above could I see a wire render? You said you played with vertices so I'm guessing this roof has a much higher polycount then it did when it was just a plane? It might also help to see what your color map and normal map look like. It's hard to tell how well your depth is coming across because there seems to be some compression happening in the picture above, but the depth doesn't seem terrible, especially for a roof. :) I would put more of this focus on depth into the walls that you can get closer to.
    Also, in the first image you have of the house I noticed that roofing right above the door looks like a scaled sown version of the big roofs. When you do that it makes tiny little roof tiles just for that one area. I would make sure that the roof tiles are consistent in scale no matter where they are.
    I look forward to updates.
  • GragGunslinger
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    GragGunslinger polycounter lvl 7
    Adding some faked AO and highlights onto your texture will push this a LONG way. This was 5 minutes in photoshop with the dodge/burn tool to try and push the shapes in and out.

    Hope this helps!
    Z6Sy1M8.jpg

    As for your terrain, you have a lot of really large details and really tiny details, but no medium ones. Try and add some flatter sheered faces to that rock cliff and stuff.
  • GragGunslinger
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    GragGunslinger polycounter lvl 7
    Ugh doubled posted. Sorry about that .
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Ok thanks :D
    I'll get a wireframe up but its a flat surface with a texture on it. I played with the vertices but it made it look worse, so I kept the flat surface. I'll use more careful dodge and burn :D

    More updates

    4gq2qd.jpg
    v41lhl.jpg
  • Shogun3d
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    Shogun3d polycounter lvl 12
    Textures seem really blurry, post up more flats so we can take a look at them. As for the highlights for the roof you mentioned, you should try using a hard brush with stronger values to paint instead of using a soft brush to dodge, causes the texture to appear muddy.
  • KristaW
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    KristaW polycounter lvl 9
    Watch out for that texture stretching under the roof. Especially because that is the part the player will see more. I always catch myself checking my buildings from the top down only and I will mistakenly spend too much time making the top of a building look good. Don't do what I do, be better than me :) ha ha. Take some shots from the ground slightly looking up at the house and see how that looks.
    Another thing that might help is going for a quick walk around your block and looking at the roofs on your neighbor's houses. Look at the underside part of the roof where it connects to the house. There are a couple different styles and I would consider implementing one of those into your roof since that is the part the player will see if they are running around on the street looking at these houses.
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Island terrain sculpt update

    started putting detail into the rocks, put a rock stencil over them, then added some shadows and highlights with the paintbrush to shape them out :D

    4gmb60.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    textures stretching... HEEEEELPPPPP! Altered UV's and added the texture again. What can I do to fix this?

    mlsh3o.jpg
  • DudeinCA
    I'm guessing it't not your UVs. So what it looks like is you are adding the texture in Mudbox. Good idea and when done right it will look great with little seams. What it looks like you are doing wrong is adding the texture once and hoping it all turns out right. You gotta paint every side of the rock. If you paint from one side it will only look good on that one side and every other side will be stretching.

    This should help if you haven't seen it already:
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeFqsfgIWzg"]Rock modeling techniques [Part 3/5] - YouTube[/ame]
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Thankyouuuuu that video was very helpful :)
    Now trying a different approach to the rocks, they're lower poly with more textures and less pinching than before.

    2z6gw82.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Island terrain more or less done, might darken the rocks. I've yet to make the beach, but I'll do it in UDK

    2i8cb49.jpg
  • AlexCatMasterSupreme
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    AlexCatMasterSupreme interpolator
    I don't know what your intention is with your environment. But you seem to be going about this wrong. Generally the rocks would be separate objects you repete and rotate to give a feeling of uniqueness. Unless you are attempting to do what Elementrix did with the hand painted scene you should be making the heightmap in mudbox and then using tileable textures or else youre going to end up with a crazy resolution texture that looks really bad up close. Also your textures are very muddy feeling.
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Yeah, I know what you mean... so, sculpt some separate rocks, say 5 or 6, and then repeat them and re size etc.? Like modular rocks sort of?

    It seems to make more sense any way :D
  • BenHenry
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    BenHenry polycounter lvl 11
    The more modular you can make it without seeing obvious clones, the better. That's my 2 cents.
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    The windows are on the ship are painted, not cut out so they're solid anyway, which means the water won't be flooding in.

    But that's some good advice with the cannon! Maybe I could look at replacing the bottom windows with those cannons :)
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Started again with the terrain. These are separate rocks, all variations of one rock.

    They'll be getting smaller as I shape out the edges on the island properly

    1eow8.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    adding smaller rocks.

    245zeiq.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    More structures with base colours

    2zr24d5.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    managed to get a rock into UDK, I'm going to build the terrain here. Quite pleased.

    eiqo3m.jpg
  • Spikings
    The rocks look better, but the cliff wouldn't be made up of round rocks like that. It would be a lot flatter and look more like a singular piece of cliff. That would be difficult to model, but making a new modular rock specifically for flatter areas would fit well with the cliff.
    You might have come across this tutorial already, but I'm linking it here so you get a visual idea of what I mean by a vertical, modular rock with a different shape to your current set. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCtjt1qudfQ"]Rock modeling techniques [Part 1/5] - YouTube[/ame] Best of luck, will be watching this over summer.
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    ta for the video Han :D

    Nothing's absolutely set in stone here, just playing with landmarks. Need to make some more rocks, maybe some more islands in the background.

    1rccau.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Okay, after looking at the original design, the island itself doesn't have much going on.
    So after much googling and referencing, I've expanded the market, added another house and a mill. I'm going to look at smaller props later in the project.

    This is a rough layout of everything.

    rl9b1j.jpg
  • KristaW
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    KristaW polycounter lvl 9
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
  • Add3r
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    Add3r polycounter lvl 11
    Hey there! SO I have a few critiques I would like to toss into the pot. First of all though, I would like to say I think it is great for you to be pushing yourself to complete a full environment, though taking it one step at a time is CRUCIAL. Since you are building your key skills right now, its great to really push yourself. Step away from the generic shapes and color schemes. Good start though, and I am glad you have already been learning from your mistakes (trying to build an entire landscape as a whole model, its super inefficient for both rendering when loading the level, and also it limits your ability to use those game assets later on in your development progress).

    As for your roof texture, I am confused as to why its so blurry. Not sure if it was down res'ed and then you are scaling it back up when applying it to the model? Not really sure, but you have a GREAT base for a texture. I did a little paint over for ya!

    ZvD1oyY.gif
    (Had to make this quick, about 10-15min in photoshop, including the .gif setup, excuse the poor quality of the paint over, used to just give an idea)

    Do NOT be afraid to really push the shapes, details, and exaggerate the composition. It doesn't have to make 100% sense, but it has to create a believable reality. As you can see below, some of the overlapping doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it creates that life and feeling of personality. Really push the borders of the objects with highlights and shadows. Avoid blacks and whites, if you are using either, apply a blend mode or lower opacity.

    Here is a hand painted texture I worked on with a colleague (who now is interning at Blizzard :D), he did the block in, and first pass on big details and I did all the major color work, detailing, highlights, most shadows, etc. We were cutting it short on a project crunch so I took the reigns while he worked on other aspects of the project:

    yeOC6fF.jpg
    (about an hour or so of work, it is down res'ed and watermarked because the project is in production and this texture is in current use, all rights belong to Bad Moon Industries.)
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Thank you for all your feedback! :D I've no idea why my textures are always so blurry. I've gone back to working on the tavern.

    This time I've decided a more simple approach, using modular assets. I'm going to keep the old tavern as a spare house (there's three separate house models). Here is the old tavern and new tavern. The new tavern is already looking better. After looking at some reference imaging, taverns tend to be bigger/wider than the one I've done.

    4smrro.jpg
  • Gheromo
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    Gheromo polycounter lvl 11
    as of ur textures being blurry it may partially come from using soft brushes, try using more defined hard ones, and only when adding subtle details start going softer to introduce new values etc. You may also find it helpful to block out textures with simple quick shapes too, it will give u an idea what it may look like before u spend too much time into it.

    As of tavern I think you have a good start, but I personally would advise you to keep blocking it out untill you know what assets you will need, how many variations of beams, windows etc etc. It will make it easier to know all this before you actually jump into doing final details, textures etc. hope it helps
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Taking all things into account, I've built a new, much cleaner tavern. Just the exterior for now.

    I'm really happy with the result!

    2qdsff6.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    a couple of houses made from parts of the tavern

    335grrb.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    Windmill! Need to add windows to it

    1zxsaav.jpg
  • HTivey
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    HTivey polycounter lvl 8
    QUESTION! Making windows reflective in UDK?

    4pxsuf.jpg
  • Spikings
    Looking good. You know I don't know much about reflective windows, but I'll comment on the roof. It really looks strange as a flat plane rather than as cuboid shape. If you want to keep it as a plane, make sure it fits into its slot correctly, rather than overlap the wall beneath it. Or change the geometry so thatit has more bulk. Remember that the majority of the time the player will be looking up from the ground, and with a flat plane it doesn't look very shapely.
    Also I think I acn see some tiling in the image above with the plastering, or is that something to do with lightmapping? It's the line that goes across the plaster from just below one window to anohter. Keep up the good work, windmill is looking fly.
  • LANKUS MAXIMUS
    Hi, I've been following your project from the start and I'm really liking where you've taken it. The new Tavern looks cool. The variants you've made from the pieces are nicely varied.

    As for the window question, I have always used cubemaps before. Not sure what your wanting to achieve but recently I've been working on a technique that can give some really cool results.

    Bump offsetting can be used for adding height detail to brickwork but in this method it Makes the windows look like they have rooms behind them. I'm pretty sure that he also focuses on the reflectiveness of your window during the tutorial...

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7N2QDCx7kY"]UDK: Bump offset material (faking interiors) - YouTube[/ame]

    Be cool to see a custom painted tavern interior as you walk down your street :)
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